Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [84]
Where is West in all of this? Tony has relinquished him, because how could she ever compete with Zenia? And even if she could compete, she wouldn’t think of it. Such a thing would be dishonourable: Zenia is her friend. Her best friend. Her only friend, come to think of it. Tony has not been in the habit of having friends.
Or it may be otherwise; it may be that there’s no room left for West, between the two of them. They’re too close together.
So there’s Zenia and Tony now, and Zenia and West; but no longer any West and Tony.
Sometimes there are the three of them together. Tony goes with Zenia and West to their place, the new one they moved into after painting their old one black. The new place isn’t new, but dingy and cheap and falling apart, an over-the-store walk-up east on Queen. This apartment has a long living room with one window, its glass rattled by passing streetcars; a big raffish kitchen, with tattered orange wallpaper and a table, a wooden one with cracked blue paint, and four mismatched chairs; and a bedroom, where Zenia and West sleep together on a mattress on the floor.
Zenia makes them scrambled eggs, and strong, amazing coffee, and West plays his lute for them: he does have one, after all. He sits on a cushion on the floor, his long legs bent at the knees and sticking up like the back legs of a grasshopper, and fingers deftly, and sings old ballads.
The water is wide, I cannot get over,
And neither have I wings to fly,
Build me a boat that can carry two,
And both shall row, my love and I,
he sings. “There’s an Irish version too,” he adds, “with a boatman.”
Really he is singing for Zenia, not for Tony at all. He is deeply in love with Zenia; Zenia has told Tony this, and indeed it’s obvious. Zenia must feel the same way about West, because she praises him, she extols him, she strokes him with her eyes. He is such a gentle man, she’s told Tony during their coffee talks; so thoughtful, unlike most men, who are slobbering brutes. He values her for the right reasons. He worships her! She is very fortunate to have found such a sweet man. Of course he’s great in the sack as well.
The sack? thinks Tony. What is the sack? It takes her a minute. She has never been in the presence, before, of two people who are in love with each other. She feels like a stray child, ragged and cold, with her nose pressed to a lighted window. A toy-store window, a bakery window, with fancy cakes and decorated cookies. Poverty prevents her entrance. These things are for other people; nothing for her.
But Zenia seems to be aware of this, too – of Tony’s singleness, her forlorn wistfulness – and smooths it over. She’s very considerate. She distracts, she acts, she talks gaily of other things. Recipes, shortcuts, wrinkles, and twists: she hasn’t lived from hand to mouth for nothing, she has a full supply of useful knacks. The secret of the scrambled eggs, for instance, is the fresh chervil and chives – she has several pots of herbs growing on the windowsill – and a little water added, and not too high a flame; the secret of the coffee is the coffee grinder, a wooden one with a handle and an enchanting pull-out drawer.
Zenia is full of secrets. She laughs, she throws her secrets casually this way and that, her teeth flashing white; she pulls more secrets out of her sleeves and unfurls them from behind her back, she unrolls them like bolts of rare cloth, displaying them, whirling them like gypsy scarves, flourishing them like banners, heaping them one on top of another in a glittering, prodigal tangle. When she’s in the room, who can look at anything else?
But Tony and West do look – just for a moment – when Zenia has her back turned. They look sadly at each other, a little shamefaced. In thrall, is what they are. They know they